


We Can Never, Ever, Forever Be

by thepocketdragon



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepocketdragon/pseuds/thepocketdragon
Summary: When Emily Junk arrives at Barden, a private boarding school, she finds herself rooming with two girls who are unlike anyone she’s ever met before. As secrets are shared and hearts are broken, she begins to learn that life- and love- aren’t as easy as she thought. Story from Emily’s POV.Lost and Delirious Bechloe AU
Relationships: Chloe Beale & Beca Mitchell, Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell, Chloe Beale/Tom
Comments: 17
Kudos: 48





	We Can Never, Ever, Forever Be

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Character death, suicide, internalised homophobia, mentions of parental death.
> 
> If you have not seen the movie 'Lost and Delirious', please take heed of all warnings. This is a very angsty, very emotional AU.
> 
> This story follows the main points of the movie plot. Some mentions of PP Canon (from 1+2) but not in chronological order.

**1.**

I don’t think I’d ever thought about love before.

  
Not in that way.

I’d seen it in movies. The guy gets the girl, the prince kisses the princess, the story ends with smiling faces. People are drawn to one another in a way you can predict from around ten minutes into the film. It’s the moment when two pairs of eyes meet across a crowded room and everyone else slips away. From then on out, only minor details stand in their way. It’s inevitable that they will end up together. Forever.

That was what I thought love was.

I wrote about it, too, that juvenile kind of love. I wrote songs about true love and things being perfect and that sickly sweet sensation I imagined it to be. The same sickly sweet feeling I had once at Disneyland when I’d been allowed to eat a pink cloud of cotton candy far bigger than my eight-year-old head. But with boys.

That was what I’d always imagined.

I don’t think I’d ever really seen love in the flesh. My dad tells me he loved my mom, but her memory is so far faded that I can’t even really remember her face. He told my step mother he loved her, but the fact that they’ve sent me 400 miles away to a boarding school whilst he’s doing business in the Cayman Islands and she moves in with her pilates instructor- Pierre- tells me otherwise. She doesn’t even wear a ring anymore. I noticed as she patted me on the shoulder as I walked, heaving case wheeling behind me, out of the house and to the vintage Mercedes my dad wanted to ‘give a run out’ on our way to Georgia.

On our way to Barden.

Barden School for Girls.

“It’ll be the making of you, Mouse” he had said as we pulled up outside a grand, red brick mansion, the school’s name emblazoned in burgundy and gold on its wall. “You’ll learn so much here. I’m assured that they take the girls that arrive and turn them into women before graduation.”

Looking back, he was right. But I don’t think he expected me to grow up quite as rapidly as I had to.

As I walked through the heavy oak doorway into a carpeted lounge decorated with marble busts and portraits of stern-looking women in gilded frames, a heavy feeling settled in my gut. Looking back, I should have listened to it. I should have paid attention to the sense of dread that came from the pressure of the piercing stares of long-dead socialites and the stifling lack of clean air and begged my father to just let me stay home and go back to regular high school.

Maybe, if I had, I’d have allowed myself a few more years before I had to learn how it feels to have your heart broken.

Maybe, if I’d asked to leave, if I’d have paid attention to the signs, things would have been different.

Maybe I could have saved her.

///

Chloe Beale was everything I’d imagined when I’d read the prospectus for the school. Beautiful, bright, full of spark. She gave off an energy that felt as if it drew you in. I guessed right away that she was someone everyone liked. Someone it would be impossible to hate. She led me up the staircase to the dorms and, as I watched the way everyone around us followed her with their eyes, I guessed it was also impossible not to love her. Not to fall in love with her. Even just a little bit.

“Barden is honestly the best” she said as we ascended up to the very top floor. “I was pretty quiet and shy when I arrived but, now, these girls are basically my whole family.” She paused in front of the door that led to the last room on the corridor, looking me up and down. “Do you sing?”

I nodded shyly. It was one of the reasons my father had picked Barden. Their music program was a bargaining chip.

Chloe grinned, almost bouncing in her regulation black leather shoes. “Perfect. So do I. I’m a Bella, by the way. There are four different acapella groups here, but the Bellas are the tits.”

Before I had a chance to say anything else, she’d guided me into the room and settled down on the edge of a bed made up with pink and yellow floral sheets. I guessed it was mine. “So, this is our room. You’ll be rooming with me, obviously. That’s my bed” she pointed to the twin bed in the centre, a cushion with a large ‘C’ denoting its owner. “And the bed in the corner belongs to Beca. Who should be here soon, but I’m pretty sure she got detention again.” I think Chloe saw the panic in my eyes. “Oh, don’t worry, it won’t be for anything serious. She’s a good student. She just… says what she thinks. It’s pretty cool actually. She’s also an amazing composer. She arranges all our music. Well, most of it. We don’t always get to perform the stuff she wants us to because there’s, like, regulations and stuff but…”

“But what?” A small girl, not taller than a few inches over five feet, walked confidently into the room. “What are you saying about me this time, Chlo?”

I could see the daring look in her eyes. The presence of her, the air of angsty, alternative anger, seemed at odds with her stature. I looked at Chloe to try and judge whether I should be scared. But Chloe was staring right back at her, a playful sparkle in her own blue eyes. I relaxed a bit.

“I was just explaining to Emily here who her new roommates are.”

“Cool.” She turned to face me. She was so different to Chloe. The uniform she wore was scuffed and she had black chucks on her feet. I thought I could see the outline of a tattoo on her wrist, barely hidden by her shirt sleeve. She had several earrings, some with metal bars, across both ears, and a playful grin on her face. “So,” she pulled a package out of her pocket and placed a cigarette in her mouth. She walked backwards, barely even glancing behind her, and pulled herself up onto the window ledge, pushing it open before she clicked a lighter and took a long, deep drag, “what brings you to this hellscape?” She looked me up and down. “Did Daddy kick you out? Let me guess. To move his new mistress in? What is it? She the same age as you or something?”

I stumbled over my words. I had no idea what to say to any of _that_. Chloe jumped to my rescue.

“Becs, be nice. She’s only been here fifteen minutes. Let the girl at least unpack before you terrify her.” She paused and walked over to the window. Her hand reached out to brush against where the hem of Beca’s skirt touched her thigh, but she seemed to second guess herself. “Anyway, she’s told me she can sing and I’m going to make sure she has a place on the Bellas. So be kind. She’s on our team.”

Beca quirked an eyebrow but I didn’t know what it meant. After a moment, she blew out another plume of smoke and turned to face me.

I gulped.

“So, you sing?”

I nodded.“I… I write my own music, too. Like, songs and stuff.” I had no idea what had possessed me to admit it.

That seemed to get Chloe’s attention. She turned back to me, an expectant look in her eyes. “Can you sing something you’ve written? Like… call it an audition?”

I opened my mouth and let the first lyrics I could think of spill from me. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to face either of my new roommates if I’d just ruined any prospects of them being my friends before I’d even been to my first class.

“I got all I need when I got you and I…”

I slowly opened my eyes and scanned the room. Chloe was closer to Beca now, her legs against the same windowsill Beca was sat on, her back propped up on Beca’s bed.

“That was impressive” Beca said flatly. I wasn’t sure if she was admitting it under duress or not.

Chloe’s eyes were huge. “Are you joking, Becs? This is aca-amazing. Oh! With you arranging and Emily writing we could do an _original_ this year. How cool would that be?”

The buzz I felt was shot down with one look from Beca. “Yeah, well. We’ll need some more grown-up lyrics than a load of rhymes about a torch. The melody’s good, though. Nice beat to it.”

“Becs, I’m sure it’s a metaphor.”

I saw the glance Chloe shot Beca as she spoke. Beca backed off a little, head bowed. It didn’t last long, though. The door burst open. “Learn to knock!” Beca groaned out loud as a gaggle of girls pushed their way into the room. “Piss off, bitches. I’m nude.”

“Chloe, I really don’t understand why you hang around with her. Didn’t those hideous ear monstrosities give you enough of a clue?” The girl who had just walked in was just as peppy and blue-eyed as Chloe.

“Fuck you” Beca growled. I wanted to laugh. I caught her eye instead and swallowed it down.

“Emily, this is my little sister Allie.” Chloe gestured to the bright blonde now in the middle of their- our- dorm room. “You might be in some classes with her. Unless you’re in AP everything?”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I caught Chloe’s eye and nodded bashfully.

“Ha!” The triumphant sound Beca made confused me at first. “Well, no need to stay and make friends, then.” She shooed the girls back into the doorway. “Aca-wiedersehen, bitches.”

Allie turned to me with a saccharine smile that made my stomach lurch. “Well, even if we’re not in the same classes you can hang out with us whenever you like, Emily.” Just before she left, she gave me a pointed stare. “Just be sure not to get too close to Beca. I’m sure you don’t want to catch whatever _she’s_ got.” Beca growled and pushed herself forwards, slamming the door so fast Allie’s hair only just whipped through the gap.

“I’m sure they don’t mean it” I said.

Beca blinked at me and then laughed. “Ah, you’re sweet, but they do. They really do. It’s all good though.”

Chloe sat up on her bed and smiled. “We call Beca ‘Titanium’, don’t we Becs?”

I sat up slightly. “After the David Guetta song?” I paused, thinking of the lyrics. “Because you’re bulletproof?”

Chloe nodded and smiled. Beca shrugged, and folded her arms. “Plus, I’m an orphan. So I’ve got nothing to lose.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It sounds stupid, it always has, but losing a parent makes you see it in other people. I usually can spot ‘dead mom’ or ‘dead dad’ just as easily as others see ‘oh, that guy’s definitely Jewish’ or ‘he’s from New York’. It’s an air.

I hadn’t spotted it with Beca. There wasn’t the same kind of hurt in her eyes.

“Oh. I… I didn’t know.” I paused to pick at my sock before I looked back up, trying not to make eye contact. “My mom is dead. She… she passed away when I was six.” I took a breath. “It’s kind of why my nickname is Mouse. I guess I was pretty quiet after she died. My dad still calls me Mouse.”

Beca rolled her eyes. “Mouse is a stupid nickname.”

Chloe looked at me. I couldn’t quite read her expression. “Emily, what’s your surname?”

“Junk.”

She gasped. “So you’re telling me your mom was Kathryn Junk? 1981 Bellas?”

I nodded. I kind of hadn’t expected it to come out so soon. In fact, I hadn’t expected anyone to ever ask. I hadn’t even known about it myself until my dad had shown me an old photograph in an attempt to get me to finally agree to boarding school.

“You’re already a Bella sister. Which means I can get you a place straight away. No audition needed. You’re a legacy.”

Beca looked at me, eyes dragging from my Mary-Janes to the knot of my regulation school tie. “I’m not calling you Mouse.” She walked closer, standing next to Chloe and bumping her with her hip. “From now on, you shall be known only as Legacy.”

**2.**

I’d never had a best friend before.

I’d had friends, sure, and I’d been to my fair share of sleepovers and birthday parties, but I’d never had a person I could definitively call my best friend.

I never had someone who stuck to my side or who I could count on to back me up or call people names on my behalf or sneak out of a dorm with me in the middle of the night.

The sound of somebody’s feet hitting the wooden floor as they got out of bed woke me up. I pretended to be asleep, though, when I heard the rustling and whispers. I heard the door close and I waited a few moments and checked their beds were both empty before slipping out of bed and sneaking a glance out of the window.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to see, but it wasn’t that.

At first, I thought they were just practicing for boys. I’d read about that before, in magazines and things back at home, and I knew it was something people- girls- sometimes did. This didn’t look like that, though. Not with the way Beca had her back pressed against the pillar I knew nobody else could see from up here. Not with the way Chloe was trailing kisses down her neck. Not with the way they looked at one another with the same stare I’d only ever seen in movies. The look that happens when everyone else just melts away.

I knew I shouldn’t be looking. I knew what I’d seen was private.

Crawling across the room, I slipped back into bed and closed my eyes, willing myself to fall asleep before they came back in.

///

The next morning, I could barely look at them. I was scared, from the pointed glares Beca had shot Allie and the others, that she would know I’d seen them. Still, I got into my uniform and followed them down to breakfast. Once I had my tray, Chloe guided me over to the table and turned to the group already sat there.

“Girls, this is Emily Junk. Emily, these are the Bellas.”

The girls didn’t look like the Bellas I’d seen the photographs left over from my mom. Those women had been tall, put-together, fight-attendant looking creatures with pressed suits and matching chignon hairstyles. These girls were a mismatched group, all different sizes and shapes. One girl was, I was certain, feeding a small hamster from her cereal bowl with a tiny spoon.

“Maybe steer clear of Lilly for now” Chloe said gently, gesturing to the girl I’d been staring at, “at least until you settle in. She’s better with people she knows. She might still lick you, though, but it’s all good. We’ve had her tested- it’s purely psychological. She’s not contagious.”

I grimaced slightly and took a seat opposite Beca. Chloe slid in next to her.

“Did you do the lit homework?” Beca asked gently, eyes on Chloe.

I buttered my toast and took a bite before I saw Chloe shake her head. “No. I… I didn’t get it.”

Beca held out her hand but Chloe shook her head. I wasn’t sure what she was asking for until Chloe spoke. “You can’t just do it for me, Bec. It’s fine. I’ll get a tutor over the holidays or something.”

“Or you’ll flunk out again and have to repeat senior year. Again.” I caught the stern look Beca gave Chloe. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. We’re both graduating this year, Chlo. Together, right?” The redhead nodded. “And then we’ll club together whatever money I can steal from Sheila and we’ll buy some shitty truck or something and we’ll road trip it out to LA and you can go to college and teach music to kids and I’ll finally get to pay my dues.”

Chloe had clearly realised I was listening. She look a sip of her water before gesturing to Beca. “Beca wants to be a music producer. Aca-awesome, right?”

I smiled. It was pretty cool.

Beca shrugged. “And Chloe here is going to be an _aca-awesome_ teacher” she almost spat out the words, “as soon as she gets her head out her ass and passes AP Russian Lit.”

///

“Now, as we have previously discussed in this class, the female-driven narratives of similar-era American novels are not regularly echoed in their Russian counterparts.” The teacher, a small woman of probably around sixty, paraded in front of us. I had the feeling she had probably delivered this course several times over. Still, it was more interesting than my English class had been back home. “As such, the theme of motherhood isn’t presented in the same way. Parent-child relationships, one could argue- in fact many do, reflect the communist regime of the soviet era in both their style and their narrative function.”

I scribbled down ‘style and function’ and looked across the desks. I noticed that Beca had sat to the left of Chloe. With her left hand holding the pen, I could just about see the way their non-dominant hands brushed against one another as the teacher spoke.

“My question to you is this. How does the mother-son relationship portrayed in typical Russian literature of the age compare to mother-son or mother-daughter relationships in American or English novels of the same time?” The teacher paused and looked up. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chloe drop Beca’s hand. “Think about your own relationships with your mothers. Maybe that would be a good starting point.” She glanced up at us. I tried to avoid eye contact.

“Chloe Beale. Since you failed to turn in yet another paper, maybe you can enlighten us?” Chloe looked up. I hadn’t expected her to look so scared. “Well?”

Seconds ticked by and Chloe said nothing.

The teacher seemed to have a smug expression on her face. It grew and grew until, suddenly, Beca shot out of her seat.

“Have you read any of our files?” Her voice came out almost as a scream. I could tell she was angry. She pushed her body slightly in front of Chloe, protecting her, and zeroed in on the teacher. “I really don’t think mother-daughter relationships is an appropriate subject to bring up without warning. Not in this class.” I knew she was looking at me. I kept my eyes on the ground. Beca took a breath and moved closer to the teacher. “This is all bullshit anyway. It’s outdated. Maybe it’s time you thought about updating the syllabus to get in touch with the real world? Or maybe you’re too scared to change, hm? We all know who pulls the strings behind the scenes.”

“Get out of my classroom, Rebecca.”

Beca moved back to her desk and picked up her bag.“With pleasure, Geraldine.”

The frosty atmosphere lasted for the rest of the class. None of us could really concentrate and the teacher was clearly flustered. The principal came to the door after a few minutes, Beca standing sheepishly behind her shoulder. The disturbance gave Chloe a chance to lean over to me. “Vaughan and Principal McKaye are a couple but nobody is supposed to know. McKaye has all the power, obviously. That’s what Beca was referring to. Just… just so you know.”

“But why pick on her? Especially if she’s also…” I stopped myself and swallowed down the end of my sentence. Instead, I took a breath and looked at Chloe. “Why did she get herself in trouble for you? I know she did it to distract her because you hadn’t answered the question.”

Chloe shrugged, eyes despondent, but I saw the smile on her face. “Because she’s bulletproof.” She sighed. “She’s got nothing to lose.” She tapped her pen on the desk. “I’d just like this class to be over so I can check she’s alright.” I saw something in her eyes when she turned to face me. I thought at the time it was love. Admiration, maybe. But now I wonder if it was fear. “She’s not as… tough as she looks” Chloe explained. “People have hurt her and she’s put up her walls, but underneath all of that she’s just a girl. She’s been hurt, Legacy. But she’s only human. She breaks when she falls down.”

///

“So, I’ve drafted a letter to my birth mom. Wanna hear it?”

I don’t think either of us were expecting Beca to be perched on her bed when we got into the dorm after class.

“I thought you said your mom was dead?” I couldn’t help but blurt it out.

  
Beca shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know for sure she’s alive. So, until she answers this letter and I’m sure, it’s neither true nor a lie. She’s Schrodinger’s mom.” Neither of us interjected and so Beca sat up and cleared her throat.

“Hi mom. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m your kid. The daughter you left for someone else to raise. I’m almost 18 now which means I can find out who you are but I’m writing this now because I’m too excited to wait.” Beca paused. I watched her hands fiddling, childlike, with the paper as she read. “I wish I could tell you life is awesome but it’s not. I’m trapped in a school I hate but I’ll be out soon. I’m going to produce music. I don’t know where it comes from, maybe from you, but music is everything to me. Maybe if we met I could play something for you?”

I felt a pang of jealousy at the idea that Beca could potentially get to do those things with her mother. I’d never get the chance again. “As soon as I’m 18, I’m coming to LA. I think that’s where you are. At least, that’s where I was found. I live in Georgia now because my fake parents work at some stuffy university, but I don’t really care much for them. They don’t care for me either. I think that’s why they put me in a boarding school. My fake dad thinks music is a waste of time and my fake mom has a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. I know it’s a long shot, but I’d love to meet you. I think we’ll get along. Love, your ever-faithful daughter. Beca.”

I don’t think Chloe or I really knew what to say. I hadn’t expected to get to hear Beca’s inner thoughts. I guess she hadn’t expected to share them, either. Not with anyone but Chloe.

“Beautiful, Bec” Chloe finally said gently. “I wish I had the guts to say something like that to my mom.”

“Chloe’s mom is jealous of her” Beca said. I don’t think she realised how much love was in the look she gave Chloe. She pouted her lips and I wondered, for a moment, whether she was about to kiss her cheek or her forehead and stopped herself when she remembered I was there. “She’s jealous because Chloe’s everything she wishes she was.” Chloe reached out and touched her hand before Beca shuffled back on her bed and smiled at her. “Say it. Go on. I always say you should rage more. Let it out.”

Chloe nodded and cleared her throat. “Dear mother,” she said into the air, “I hate you as much as I should love you. Maybe more. You pick on me and you make me feel small and not enough even though I know I’m talented and beautiful. Your nagging at me for flunking out only makes me want to do it more. I failed on purpose because I didn’t want to go home. Because I’m not your perfect little girl, no matter how much you want me to be, and I never will be. As soon as I can, I’m going to run far away. I’m going to follow Beca and make a life in California where I never have to wear a twin set or those stupid, itchy matching dresses with Allie ever again.”

Chloe let out a long breath and I knew she felt better for it. Beca’s eyes gleamed. “Rage more. See, it works?” She turned to me and I swallowed. “What about you, Legacy?”

I sighed. “I… I don’t have anything to say to my mom.” It hurt to admit. “I don’t even really remember her face. I miss her, though. Every day.”

“Ah, where’s the rage, Legacy?” Beca got up and pulled me off my bed. “Your mom letter is as stuffy and boring as your mousy songs. You need to rage more. Let me show you how.”

**3.**

I’d never thought about music like a puzzle before.

To me, songs had always been linear. They had a beginning, a middle and an end. Like a story. Well, like the stories I’d heard when I was a kid.

Music, I realised, was much more beautiful when it was complicated. When it sounded like real life, with interweaving patterns and hints of something else under the main melody that made your breath hitch and your ears hum.

Like stories, too, I guess.

I’d never heard anyone make magic with music before Beca Mitchell.

At least I’d thought it was magical.

Everyone else seemed to have other ideas.

I had stood behind them in choir practice trying not to notice the way Beca’s fingers playfully tapped against Chloe’s. I saw it, though. I saw how, as the music swelled and the song changed, she reached out and squeezed Chloe’s hand. I saw the playful glint in Beca’s eyes.

And then I heard it.

I stood there and I listened, trying my best to keep my own part of the song moving, as she opened her mouth and wove her own melody around ours. Her voice was beautiful, etherial in the huge, open expanse of the school chapel, and I smiled as I realised what she was singing.

“This time, baby, I’ll be” I couldn’t help but smile, “bulletproof.”

It was Beca in a song.

One of many songs that said everything it was impossible to explain about Beca Mitchell with words alone.

We all stopped and I lifted my hands up, inches apart, ready for the applause I was sure was coming. We had all been there, we had all heard what Beca had done. But the room was silent.

It was in that moment that I realised that people didn’t understand how special she was. Nobody except for me. And Chloe.

“What was that?”

Miss Posen, the young teacher responsible for keeping us in line, glared up at Beca with fire in her eyes. I noticed how Chloe moved onto the balls of her feet, ready to push herself into the firing line.

“This isn’t the Beca show. How many times do I have to remind you?”

“I just thought I’d spice it up” Beca said with a nonchalant shrug that I didn’t quite believe in. “Something needed to happen. We’ve been singing the same songs the whole time I’ve been in this shithouse of a school.”

Miss Posen squared up to Beca and my breath caught in my throat. “You, young lady, are _not_ a Bella.”

Beca scoffed. “Well, newsflash, has-been, neither are you.”

“Get out.”

Beca’s laughter was loud and unexpected. She paused in the doorway for a moment, eyes roaming over where Chloe and I were stood still. She winked at me and mouthed two words.

“Rage more.”

I went to follow her, feeling as if I should, until I felt Chloe’s arm blocking my way. She shook her head and turned back to Miss Posen. The teacher took a deep breath and tried to smile at us, even though we could all tell she was seething with rage.

“Alright, girls. Now that we’re no longer plagued by distractions, let’s take it from the top.”

///

Chloe waited for me after practice. As we moved through the school grounds back towards our dorm, the crowds of students thinned.

Suddenly, it was just us.

Chloe sighed as she paused and looked at me. There was a worry in her eyes I hadn’t noticed before. I’d always been too mesmerised by the bright blue to see it. “She’s not going to be OK. I know she was laughing but, well, she actually wants to impress Miss Posen. She’d been working on fitting that song into our set for weeks only to have it shot down in flames. I… I should have said something.”

I hadn’t known Chloe long enough to know what to say to her. I just gave her my best apologetic smile as we took the final flight of stairs together and braced ourselves for what we would find on the other side of the dorm room door.

Chloe looked around the room, checking out of the window down onto the terrace where I’d seen them before. She picked up Beca’s hoodie from her bed and slipped off her blazer before putting the garment on over her shirt and tie.

“She sometimes goes up onto the roof when she’s sad. I think she likes the birds that live up there. I… I think she likes the idea of being able to fly away like they can.”

For the first time in my life, I understood completely. I just nodded and watched as Chloe left.

///

I tried my best to zone out and focus on my homework while the room was empty. The teachers had been kind enough not to overload me so early into the semester and I finished what I had to do quickly.

Still, it was getting dark. I checked the time on my watch and realised it had been over an hour. Beca and Chloe were still not back. There was a jittering sensation in my belly at first, wondering if they were safe up there alone, but then I remembered what I’d seen before and realised that, maybe, they were using the privacy of being on top of the world for more than just talking. Maybe, I thought, they needed a little time elsewhere, a little time without me. They had been all alone in this room, I realised, until only a few days ago.

I felt guilty. The room felt uncomfortable and I needed to get out. I changed out of my uniform and into my bath robe. Collecting my things in the caddy I’d been given and slipping on the shower shoes just like the ones my mom had insisted I take to sleep-away camp, I walked down the hallway towards the large communal bathroom and into the last shower stall. I placed my towel on the hook and slipped off my robe before turning on the water.

The pressure was enough to let my mind go blank for a moment. I leaned back, rinsing the suds of shampoo out of my long, dark hair. That was when the music started in my head. It was always the same song, the one I had part-performed as my not-audition for the Bellas, the one I couldn’t finish. As I watched a river of bubbles disappear down the drain at my feet, I wondered to myself if I should ask Beca to help me.

I couldn’t help but want to hear my words in her sweet, soulful voice.

I could almost hear it.

I could almost hear her singing.

I _could_ hear her singing.

I shut off the water the moment I heard the doors crash open. A shower at the other end of the room spluttered to life and then I was sure. Beca Mitchell was singing. She was singing a song I recognised. The song about being bulletproof and having nothing to lose. Her song.

Titanium.

A second voice, lighter, higher, joined hers and I couldn’t help but smile to myself. I’d only heard Chloe sing once or twice, but it was a beautiful sound. I reached out for my towel but stood still, trying to stay as quiet as possible. It felt weird, hearing them singing together thinking there was nobody else around, but I couldn’t move.

Selfishly, I didn’t want to, either.

Their voices fitted so well together. Chloe’s brightness shone against Beca’s powerful melody. The words were almost meaningless; it was the harmony, the effortless, beautiful mix of their sound into one singular song that felt like magic.

When the lyrics died away, replaced by quiet gasps and shuffled movements, I realised they were kissing each other. I realised they were nude. I realised I should never have stayed.

Silently, I shrugged on my robe and gathered my things, tiptoeing back into the dorm and drying my hair as aggressively and quickly as possible so that- by the time they got back- they would never know I’d been there.

I would be just another secret I would have to keep.

///

It’s hard, now, to remember if I was asleep when they got back.

I could have been. Or I could have simply looked asleep. Or, I realise now, they may not have even thought to check.

Still, the door opened, letting in a shaft of moonlight. They rushed in and landed on Chloe’s bed. Together.I laid there in the darkness and tried my best not to listen. Tried my best not to notice the shadows on the walls, the way their movements played out before my eyes in silhouette. I tried my best to ignore the sounds, to pretend it was all a dream and that I didn’t know why they were gasping or moaning. I tried to pretend I couldn’t hear the whispers of ‘Bec’ and ‘Chlo’ and ‘there’ and ‘please’ and ‘more’ and ‘I love you’.

I tried to forget them the way they had forgotten me.

Looking back, I wish I could.

///

My dreams were filled with images of shadow puppets. Puppets doing things I’d never seen puppets do before.

My dreams were pulled from me by a single sound. A sound I will never forget.

A scream.

A scream so piercing, so chilling, I can still hear it now.

A scream followed by a grunt of “Legacy, shut the door.”

I sat there for a moment, blinking myself into consciousness. That was when I realised what had happened. When I realised who had screamed. And why.

  
Beca, sat up in bed, sleep (or something else)-mussed hair sticking up as she pulled sheets across her naked chest, glared at me. “Shut. The fucking. Door.”

Allie, Chloe’s sister, stood trembling at the base of Chloe’s bed, eyes locked on her topless sibling.

I moved over to close the door and sat back on my bed, not wanting to look at anyone. I heard it, though. I heard Beca clear her throat and timidly whisper “Allie. Your… your sister gets nightmares. I was only trying to help. It… it isn’t like that.”

Allie didn’t move.

So I did.

I pushed her back by her shoulders and tried my best to look truthful and reassuring, tried my best to look her in the eye as I said words we both know were a lie.

“It really isn’t what you think, Allie.”

By the time I turned around, Chloe was crying. I didn’t see her, though. My eyes were drawn to Beca. I saw the panic all over her face and I felt weight in the pit of my stomach. She reached out to stroke Chloe’s tears off her cheeks and a hand batted her away. Pushed her back.

The weight got ten pounds heavier.

“Get out of my bed.”

Chloe had never sounded so scary to me. There was no smile. No brightness. Nothing but fear.

“I said, get out.”

“Chloe don’t overreact. She’s just a dumb little…”

Chloe sat up. “You don’t know Allison. She’s going to go straight to mom and dad. She’s going to tell them and they’re going to be up here and…”

“We’ll get through it, though. You and me. We’ll deal with it and they’ll get over it and before you know it we’ll be in LA.” Beca tried her luck again and reached out to tuck Chloe’s wild hair behind her ear. She forced a smile.

Chloe turned away. I froze, unable to decide between running out of the room or staying.

They didn’t see me, though. Not then.

In that moment, I was who I had always been. Not Legacy. Not Emily. Not a Bella. Not anything more than another shadow cast on the wall.

I was just Mouse.

**4.**

I’d never kept a secret before.

I’d never really had to.

Since arriving at Barden, it seemed I was quickly finding out how to know things but not share them.

I was learning how to hold everything inside myself.

I was learning how to lie.

I was learning how much it hurt.

///

After Allie had left, it was clear that people were talking. They had always talked about Beca, it seemed, but now they were looking at Chloe the same way.

They were looking at me that way, too.

  
The difference was, I didn’t really care. Not like Chloe did.

I stood back and watched as she pulled Allie aside after classes ended that afternoon. I watched from behind a tree, books hugged to my chest, listening to the words that travelled across the quad.

I heard “adopted” and I heard “sorry” and I heard “sleep” and “bed” and I saw how hard Chloe was trying to hold everything together. She seemed to smile at Allie, pull her into a hug and let go. The moment Allie turned, Chloe ran.

I followed her.

I didn’t feel as if I had a choice.

I followed her and I watched her as she collapsed against the edge of her bed, sheets clutched in white fists, her open-mouth cries making no sound. I watched her ragged breathing settle. I watched her wipe away tears. I watched her back straighten as she pulled herself up to sit and face me.

“You know, don’t you?” I didn’t want to nod. Not until I knew what Chloe was asking. “You know she’s not… she’s not bulletproof, Emily. She’s not. But neither am I.” She sighed so hard I almost felt it. “I love her but I’m tired. I’m so tired. I’m tired and I’m scared of the looks and the things people say behind my back. It’s not fair. I like boys, Emily. Love them. That’s what I was saying to Allie. I’m boy crazy if anything. Beca just… she’s my best friend.”

I didn’t pretend to understand. I stayed, though. I stayed while Chloe collected herself. I stayed and I sat on the edge of my bed until she stood up and gave me her best painted-on smile.

“She’s going to need you, Em. She’s going to need a friend and, now, I can’t… I can’t be her friend, Emily. Not anymore. Not until I can make people understand.” She hovered in the doorway and checked behind her. We both knew what she was looking for. She turned back to face me. She said something to me then. Something I wish I could forget. Something that changed everything. “If you can”, she paused, looking into my eyes, “promise me you’ll love her. She needs to know someone does.”

///

The looks of sympathy never go away when your parent dies. I was used to being cast a look every now and again, whenever people remembered or heard for the first time.

In my entire life, I’d never been looked at like this.

The Bellas all walked past the table where Beca was sat, the table I’d chosen to sit at, on their way to their usual spot. Each of them gave me a look, a knowing look, before turning away. None of them made eye contact with Beca. Not even Lilly, who would usually give a stare so intense it made your insides churn.

We sat in silence. I wasn’t even sure she wanted me there, but Chloe had asked me to be her friend and I didn’t want her to be alone. Not when the group had clearly chosen to take the other side. Chloe’s side. I wanted to say something about time healing wounds, I thought it would be comforting. But I realised, in that moment, Beca and I were two of the only people who truly understood how many things were wrong with that sentiment.

“I know, I mean I’m not a homophobe. I’m just not, you know, like that.”

I watched Beca’s fingers press into the slice of toast in her hands as Chloe’s voice echoed across the old hall.

“It wasn’t like that, anyway. Not for me. She just… she’s adopted, you know? And she’s got a lot of shit going on. I was trying to be a good friend. I was trying to be what she needed.”

At the sight of Stacie’s sympathetic hand coming out to rest against Chloe’s forearm, Beca snapped. The tray of juice and toast landed on the ground with a crash, followed moments later by the sound of the double doors clattering against the ancient brick walls.

///

“O, sun. Burn the great sphere thou movest in! Darkling stand the varying shore o’ the world. O Antony! Antony! Antony!”

Miss Vaughan put down the book and looked up, eyes roving across all of us. I saw Beca out of the corner of my eye, hair wilder than usual and a pen dancing between the fingers of the hand I’d usually caught her brushing against Chloe’s. Chloe wasn’t there. Chloe was sat on the other side of the class, flanked by a stern-looking Amy and Stacie.

“Her beloved is dying.” I confess I hadn’t paid much attention at all to the words. I wasn’t in the mood for Shakespeare. “The world doesn’t make sense without him. She… she feels as if something should be happening to mark this great loss, and so she calls upon the sun. Asks for the earth to burn.”

Beca sat up straight. Miss Vaughan nodded at her as she traced a finger along the page. I’d never heard Beca speak up in class to actually contribute before. “She says it again later. Cleopatra. She… she says ‘Shall I abide in this dull world, which in thy absence is no better than a sty?’ I think I understand what she’s trying to say.”

There was a knowing look between them, Beca and Miss Vaughan. An almost smile. “Yes!” The older woman’s exclamation made me jump. I pretended to look down at my book. “Well, what Cleopatra is talking about is love. Love that crosses all boundaries and all rules. Passionate, unbridled love.”

I caught the way Chloe lifted her head, the way her eyes met Beca’s. For a brief moment, the world made sense again.

“What do you girls think?” Miss Vaughan crossed her legs as she leaned against her desk. “What is love? Does love truly exist? Is it science? Or a social construct? Or is it more?” She scanned the room. “Stacie. Why don’t you start us off?”

Stacie shrugged. “I mean, I know lust exists.” There was a wave of giggles from the Bellas in the class. “I think maybe love is just a continuation of lust. Lust with strings. Lust with… lust with neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine and cortisol firing. Everything we think and feel can be explained by biology. I don’t think love is any different. Our brains might try and rationalise it, but it’s science. Feelings are just science. Love is biological.”

Miss Vaughan nodded. “A very nice explanation, Stacie. Does anyone else have an idea?”

“Love is the way our bodies prepare us for procreation. It’s an evolutionary mechanism to get us to stay with one partner, to raise a child. Really, if it’s about procreation, love is sex.”

I thought back to my step mother and her pilates instructor. I thought back to the way they looked at one another. That wasn’t love. It certainly wasn’t about procreation. But sex? All of it was about sex.

Love, to me, was something I had yet to comprehend. It was a feeling I hadn’t known. I didn’t have the words. I didn’t know where the line was between not-love and love. I didn’t know what made it different.

Beca did, though.

Beca Mitchell knew what love was. She knew better than all of us.

She scoffed at Cynthia Rose’s answer. “Well, that’s hypocritical” was the first thing she said, “procreation? Really? How do you expect any of us to believe that in this century?” She took a breath and rose from her seat. “Love just is. Love is the point. It’s the destination, not the journey. You climb mountains to find love at the top. You stay there. You’re there forever. Because if you move, you fall.” Her eyes locked on Chloe’s. “You fall.”

She shook her head. I noticed the wild, faraway stare in her eyes and I felt my heart begin to race. “Love is poetry. It’s music. It’s art. It’s language. Love is the most powerful feeling in the world. It’s…” She was staring only at Chloe now. “So many people can explain it better. Not just Shakespeare. It’s, ah, Elvis Presley who said ‘take me to your heart, for it’s there that I belong.’ Rod Stewart, even, said ‘fill my heart with gladness, take away all my sadness, ease my troubles that’s what you do’. That’s what love feels like.”

Beca was a runaway train now. There was no stopping her. I was poised, waiting for the moment she would inevitably crash. “Love isn’t about one person’s feelings. It’s about connection. They don’t write about ‘my heart’ or ‘my soul’. They talk about ‘you’. ‘Her’.” Beca blinked. “‘I can’t go on without her. There’s no song without her. It’s all wrong without her’.”

I took a moment to watch Chloe. She was so still. Frozen. Trying her best not to look, although her eyes kept betraying her as Beca stalked closer and closer. “Sometimes it’s even simpler. Sometimes it’s just as simple as ‘she keeps me warm’. Shakespeare, well, Cleopatra, talked about the sun, but we all know what she meant. How could she feel heat without him? How would she ever feel anything again? She was numb, you see, and that’s why she asked the sun to burn down the earth. Because without love, without him, she couldn’t feel a thing.” Beca brushed her hair off her face and I noticed tears filling her eyes. “Nothing except the feeling of her own heart breaking in her chest.”

All of us sighed with relief when the bell rang out. Beca picked up her bag and left the room before any of us. I glanced back at Chloe and watched as a waterfall of silent tears spilled down her cheeks.

I walked closer to her, Miss Vaughan giving me the nod to take her out. To take her to our dorm.

“I’ll let Principal McKaye know Chloe’s unwell” she whispered to me. “And I’ll make sure to keep Beca busy. Just… just for a while at least.”

I don’t know if she knew what was happening. I don’t know whether Beca had ever told them the truth.

There is no way to know now.

///

I linked arms with Chloe and walked, our heads down, across the quad and back to our dorm building. We got to the door before she met my gaze.

My heart broke for her then.

I saw the fear, no longer hidden by bright eyes or sunshiny smiles. I saw it and I felt it. For both of them.

“I did love her” she finally whispered once she had clambered onto her bed and pulled her ‘C’ pillow on her lap. “I… I know it sounds stupid to admit it, but I really did feel all those things she was talking about, just like she did. I still love her. She’s my best friend. She…” Chloe eyed me up and down. “You don’t look like you’ve ever taken drugs, Emily. But people say that there’s a feeling you get. It’s a feeling unlike anything else but, well, it only happens the first time. You spend the rest of your life taking more and more of this stuff to try and feel it again.” Chloe took a long breath. “That’s what addiction is. I felt it the first time she ever smiled at me. The first time she sang for me. The first…. well. She’s my drug, Em. That’s what I’m trying to say. She’s like a drug to me and I could spend the rest of my life chasing how she made me feel.”

Chloe’s fingers pressed against her lip. I wondered, for a moment, if she was replaying a memory, trying to find the sensation of a kiss without Beca there.

“When people are addicted to something, they go to rehab, right? They do that cold turkey thing and they learn to live without it. They learn to live without that feeling. And that’s what I need to do. I need to learn to live without it because, otherwise, this thing- this addiction- is going to ruin everything. It…” Chloe took a deep breath. “I need my parents, ok? I know I say I don’t and I know I said all that stuff about my mom but I can’t lose them. They’re my family. And Allie, too. So I don’t have a choice. I have to… go to Beca rehab and learn to live without her. I… I know I can never be with her like that ever again. Because it will break me. It already hurts too much.”

It was hard to sit there and not point out that whatever Chloe was doing was already hurting both of them.

It was hard to sit there and not feel sad.

It was hard to sit there and not think about all of those songs Beca had talked about. It was hard to watch Chloe and not think about how love was supposed to make everything better.

“I need you to keep her safe, Emily.”

I nodded. I would try my best, I knew that much was true.

“She’s lost everyone. And… she’s going to need you because otherwise she’ll be all alone.”

I saw the fear grow in Chloe’s eyes and, for the first time, I knew exactly what she was afraid of.

“If… if she thinks scorching the earth will make her better, will make her feel something, she’ll do it. But she’ll get burned if she tries.” She looked at me, her lip trembling uncontrollably. “I can’t be there to put out any more of her fires. Not now. Not anymore.”

**5.**

I’d never heard of a riff off before.

Suddenly I was in the basement of the school building surrounded by too many people, trying desperately to learn the rules to a game I was certain it was impossible to win.

I stuck by Beca’s side, copying the way she reluctantly joined in with harmonies or a baseline but never actually managed to start a song. I wanted to, of course I did, but the only song stuck in my head was the unfinished one I’d been working on for weeks. There was no way anyone would want to hear that. Plus, I had no idea how it ended. Instead, we stood on the sidelines and watched.

We watched as group after group tried their best to pluck songs out of thin air and force them into impossibly tight categories. We watched as a group of boys from our brother school, the only group who had worn their uniform to the event, performed impossible backflips and sang old R&B songs in six-part harmonies that I didn’t believe weren’t rehearsed.

The game very quickly descended into a party. There weren’t any adults around anymore; Miss Posen had disappeared the moment the group had been kicked out of the game to head back into the main building and so we were all alone. It was a Saturday after all. I imagined the teachers had places to be.

There had been a boy there, hanging around behind the High Notes who had positioned themselves next to the ventilation shaft where they could pass a joint between them without Miss Posen knowing. He wasn’t a Treblemaker, he wasn’t in uniform, but he was certainly from their school. There was no other reason he would have been there. I caught myself staring and felt Beca’s burning glare in the same direction. I turned to ask.

“Tom” she said through gritted teeth. “He, Legacy, is not a friend.”

It wasn’t long before we noticed Chloe walking towards this mystery man. We stood back as she reached a hand around his waist, fingers stroking over the material of his t-shirt, and tipped her head back as she laughed at his joke. I felt Beca tense up next to me.

Chloe took Tom by the hand and led him out of the basement. I turned to Beca, to check on her, thinking desperately of a way to distract her, but she was already halfway out the door. I ran, thankful my legs were significantly longer than hers, until I caught up.

“What are you doing?” I half-whispered.

“Come on, Legacy. Just… come with me.”

I nodded and followed. We walked as quietly as we could across dusk-tinted grass until Beca pulled me into her behind a tree. Both of us leaned out, one on either side, looking across the quad. Looking until we both saw it. Saw them.

I wish now I had said something. I wish I had made a sound or stepped on a twig or done something so that Chloe knew we were there.

I think Chloe wishes I had, too.

Instead, I felt Beca’s hackles rise, felt her animalistic urges take over, as we watched Chloe’s lips capture Tom’s. I felt her fists clench as Chloe’s hand pushed his shirt upwards. I heard her breathing all but stop as the same hand reached down and unbuttoned his jeans. Then hers.

“No” I finally found the strength to speak. “Beca, come on. You don’t need to be here. Don’t torture yourself like this.”

We ran, then. Ran back to the dorm. We ran and then we waited. Both of us. Waited for her.

///

Beca was becoming more and more like an animal. She stalked the room, wild eyes glancing back towards the door at every tiny sound. She growled and scratched and flexed her claws. She was like a lion in captivity, caged but untamed.

Dangerous.

Ready to strike.

I knew the moment the door opened that I should have left. I couldn’t have, not really, but I wished I had. They needed their space.

They would have remembered I was there if I had left. So I did what I had done before; I became Mouse and I sank, as far as possible, into the background. I turned my head and tried to pretend I couldn’t hear every word and every movement and every breath. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t the audience to their scene. Their moment.

Nothing happened at first. I climbed as surreptitiously as I could into bed and pulled the covers up and over myself. The lights went out and I curled onto my side, still able to see Chloe’s bed. I couldn’t shut my eyes. I couldn’t look away.

Instead, I watched. I watched as Chloe pulled the top she had been wearing over her head. I watched as she shimmied out of the jeans Beca and I both knew had been dancing around her thighs only an hour before. I watched as she pulled on an old t-shirt. I watched as, seemingly out of nowhere, Beca’s hand reached out and clasped Chloe’s. I heard the yelp. I tried not to move.

I saw the shadow as Beca pulled herself up onto her knees, bringing Chloe into her body. I saw the movement as she reached out to tuck a loose strand of red hair behind her ear. I heard the shuddering breath as she pressed her lips against Chloe’s.

I almost felt the rush of air as Chloe pushed her back onto the bed.

“Stop.”

Beca blinked. “No… why?”

Chloe shook her head. “We can’t do this anymore, Bec. We … we just can’t. You have to understand. You have to listen. I… I know you know how I feel about you. You know, alright? I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you were wrong about any of that. But.. but now? We can’t. Not anymore. Not ever again. Ok?”

I knew Beca’s clenched jaw was preventing her sobs from escaping. The sound came out as a squeak as she shook her head, tears coming so heavily they landed on the floor. “Please.”

Chloe was crying, too. Her tears were quiet, though. “We… we can still be friends. Best friends, Bec. Just… I can’t love you like that. We can just never, ever forever be. Do you get it?”

Beca shook her head and turned away. Chloe pulled her sheets off her bed and walked out of the room. As the door closed gently, with one final click, Beca Mitchell broke before my eyes.

///

I had never seen anyone grieve like that for someone who wasn’t dead.

Beca Mitchell was a shell of a person, nothing more. She was empty and fragile and hollowed out by the way Chloe had pulled everything from her.

I sat with her at breakfast, watched her glance over to the table of animated Bellas and mourn. I knew what mourning looked like, after all. I’d been doing it all my life.

The most disturbing thing was the silence. Beca Mitchell embodied sound. She was harmony and song and chord. I asked her, trying to get her mind off of the situation, if she’d help me with my song. She scoffed. With glassy, soulless eyes, she turned to me.

“She took my melody, Legacy.” She licked her chapped, dry lips. “I don’t have a song in me without her.”

We both stopped talking then. We listened instead. Listened as the Bellas’ conversation turned to the Riff Off and Tom. Listened as Chloe told everyone what had happened. Listened as Amy and Stacie and Jessica and Ashley encouraged her, loudly, to talk about boys. Boys like Tom. Boys who, it seemed Chloe was keen to point out, were nothing like Beca.

I knew the other girls were pushing Chloe. I knew they were interested and excited. They were teenagers, after all. Children, really.

They didn’t know what they were doing.

None of them knew.

None of them would know until it was too late.

///

When Beca Mitchell smashed a mirror onto our bedroom floor, I knew I was in over my head.

Every ounce of rage she had saved up in her body came pouring out as we got back into the room after breakfast. She hadn’t thought about me, about hurting me. She hadn’t thought about scaring me. All she had thought about was making an impact. Raging more.

I watched as she plucked a shard from the frame and held it in her hand. I panicked, then, wondering what she would do with it.

She looked up and me and I saw a terrifying determination in her eyes.

She licked her lips.

“Cut off my hair.”

She proffered the shard in her shaking hand. I pushed myself back onto the bed but she lurched over me.

“Cut off my hair, Legacy.”

I found my words then. I cleared my throat. “Beca, Chloe wants… she wants a boy. She doesn’t want a girl with hacked off hair who looks like a…”

The crash of an entire bookcase overturning shook me to my core. I curled into myself on the bed, arms gathering my bent legs into myself.

“I know!” Beca laughed, but I could see the tears threatening to fall. “But I’ve got to get her back, Legacy. Chloe loves me. She loves ME. Only me. She just… she needs to rage more. She needs to be brave and let herself fly. She… she won’t fall.”

She dropped the shard onto the wooden floor and her arms went limp. Looking at me through a curtain of brown strands, I heard the truth.

“I’ve got nothing left.”

I knew, then, why Chloe had asked me to love her. I knew why she had wanted me close by. I sat up, trying to find the words to make Beca more like herself. I tried to think like Chloe. I tried to think what she would want me to say, what she would want Beca to hear.

The words came to me in a song. Her song.

“If you’ve got nothing left, you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s just like you said.” I paused, waiting for Beca to look at me. Her pupils danced slightly from side to side, but I locked onto her gaze. “You’re titanium.”

**6.**

I had never seen someone fight like that before.

The library had become Chloe’s safe space. She was always, it seemed, buried beneath piles of books on Russian literature. I had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t reading any of them. Still, I couldn’t judge. I could barely get through a page of homework without my mind wandering back to thinking about Chloe and Beca and the chasm between them I seemed to be bridging singlehandedly.

I sat across from Chloe as I pretended to focus on my assignment. My eyes, however, were drawn back up to her over and over. I could see how tired she was. The bright, dewy exterior I had come to associate with her was gone. She was dull, somehow. Grey. On anyone else, it would have been unnoticeable. On Chloe, it was as if someone had turned all of the lights out.

I watched how her finger tapped against the page. I watched as she stroked one digit down the edge of the book. I saw the blood and heard her hiss as the paper sliced her. She put her finger in her mouth and sucked, but her eyes didn’t register any pain.

I knew, then, what Miss Vaughan had been talking about; what Shakespeare had meant.

She was numb.

Numb without her.

If she had called upon the sun to set a fire, the fire had been set in Beca’s soul.

I can still remember the heat rushing through me, the way my skin prickled in anticipation, as she walked into the library that day, laptop under her arm. I can remember the brightness, unusual and uneasy against her pallid skin, the flame-flickering dance of her eyes.

I can remember it so clearly, the sounds still ring in my ears when I am surrounded by nothing but silence.

Nothing but memories of her.

Beca Mitchell walked into the library with a fire in her soul and set everything ablaze.

I don’t think she had meant to. I don’t think she had realised how hot she was burning, how much her rage had stoked the embers until it rose, an inferno, beyond her control. Maybe she had only meant to start a fire in Chloe’s soul, too.

Maybe that’s what the music had been for.

I thought she was fearless.

Now, I wonder if she had been numb, too.

Beca pulled herself up onto the table and opened her laptop. Handing her headphones over to Chloe, I watched on as she slipped them over her head.

And pressed play.

I couldn’t hear it, none of us could, but I saw the music in Chloe’s eyes. I saw it in the way she looked at Beca, unable to take her eyes away. I saw it in the way blush rose over her cheeks, the way some of the light seemed to return. I saw it in the tapping of her fingers against the scuffed wooden desk, in the dance of her tongue over her lips as melody after melody cascaded into her through her ears.

I had never felt music before.

I felt it when I looked at Chloe Beale.

The music came to an end and Beca stared, expectantly.

Out of the silence, a single cough came from a desk in the corner.

Allie stared at her sister. Her eyes were trying to communicate something but Chloe, I knew, had no chance of reading it. Not when she had been reminded of exactly why Beca Mitchell was the person she loved.

I caught the moment Chloe finally registered.

So did Beca.

It was as if someone had powered off a disco ball.

Everything stopped turning and, suddenly, the shine was gone.

Beca slipped off the desk and clapped her laptop shut. She pulled her headphones away and stalked back out of the room as silently as she had entered.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t decide who needed me more and so I froze.

I left them both to think and, picking up my pencil, I thought back to the high school I could have gone to and I felt a longing to be anywhere but in that place.

I think, looking back, that Beca and Chloe would rather have been anywhere else, too.

///

In the dark hours, I listened. I listened to rustling sheets and huffing breaths and the frustrated twists and turns of two bodies not used to being alone.

I heard anguished grunts and stifled, shaky sobs.

And then I heard movement.

I heard sheets peeling back and feet padding over polished wood and whispered names.

I heard confusion and desperation and pleading.

I heard soft lips and releasing breaths and grasping fingers tangled in messy hair.

I heard the silence as if it were the most deafening sound I had ever heard.

When I could no longer hear, I opened my eyes.

I opened my eyes in time to see lips meet lips, tears mingling with tears, hands in hands.

I opened my eyes to see everything align, just for a moment, before it fell apart.

“Please.” Beca’s whisper carried through the air, a boat battling through a turbulent sea of desperation and fear. “Please, Chloe.”

_Choose me._

I knew, then, what she was asking.

I knew why.

_Choose me. Not him._

It really was that simple.

It could have been, at least.

“You love me.”

Chloe sat up, then. “I do. You know I do. But it can’t be like that anymore. Anyway, I… I’m with Tom now.” Chloe pulled her hand away from Beca. I wondered if it had taken her that long to remember that the boy even existed. “He’s my boyfriend. You’re my best friend. That… there’s a difference, Beca. I love you both but I love you in different ways.”

Beca took in the words but didn’t let go.

She didn’t let go of her grasp on Chloe’s t-shirt until she was physically prised off.

The hand that had been holding her went straight to her mouth, teeth biting down on flesh as she howled at the loss.

It was a sound I had only heard once before in my life.

It was a sound my six-year-old self had never wanted to hear again.

Now, when it echoes in my head, it is a two-part harmony; a double layer of grief.

I laid back in my bed, desperate not to be noticed, and closed my eyes.

A tear trickled down onto my pillow. I realised, then, that I was grieving too. For both of them.

///

Allie was in charge of delivering the post to the upperclass dorms. She knocked, this time, and walked in. Chloe smiled at her as best she could. It was clear to me that she had been crying but I wondered if Allie would even notice.

She dropped envelopes onto our beds. One letter for me, one for Chloe and one for Beca.

Our letters, mine and Chloe’s, were the same. Invitations to the annual acapella mixer in the quad the following evening. I noticed Beca didn’t have one and wondered if Miss Posen had kicked her out. Her letter was different. Official. Heavily postmarked.

She looked up.

“It’s from LA.”

I noticed Chloe fight the enthusiasm, fight the urge to ask. Taking a breath, she pulled her towel off the back of the door and left. I took her spot and sat, cross-legged, in front of Beca as she prised the envelope open with care. I noticed the handwriting on the front of it. Neat. The penmanship of someone well-educated.

For the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful.

Beca unfolded the letter and let her eyes scan the page. She grimaced and handed it to me.

“Can you read it to me? I… I can’t think straight.”

I nodded and began to read. I switched off my brain and said each word as my eyes saw it. I didn’t want to know before she did.

_“Dear Rebecca,_

_Thank you for your letter, which was received on October 24th._

_In line with your request, we attempted to pass your correspondence to the caseworker assigned to your adoption case._

_We have been informed by the CPS that their attempts to pass on your letter were rejected._

_The caseworker informed the team that it is no longer possible to fulfil your request._

_As such, we have returned the letter to you._

_Kind regards,”_

“Stop reading.”

I looked up. Beca took the letter from me and tore it in two.

“I should have known. I should have guessed. I mean, they’re not saying it but it’s obvious. Either she’s dead or she doesn’t want to hear from me. Either way, she’s dead to me.” I watched as thought after thought seemed to race through Beca’s mind. Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked at me. “Well, I guess there’s no point in going to California now, is there? Not… not without her there.”

I wasn’t sure which ‘her’ she was talking about.

I didn’t ask.

Beca cleared her throat. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a walk. You… you should get ready for the fall mixer. It’s always a fun time.”

When I look back now, when I remember the longing look we shared as she paused in the doorway, I feel sick.

I didn’t know then.

I had no idea.

I was just a roommate getting ready to sing with a group of girls with half a song stuck in her head.

I was just a teenager lost in a grown-up world I barely understood.

I was innocent, then.

Innocent until I wasn’t anymore.

**7.**

I had never heard anyone scream like that before.

I hope I never do again.

I play it over and over in my head and every time I try my best to switch it off before the inevitable.

I never do.

///

I headed down to the fall mixer that afternoon with Chloe. I stood with the other Bellas and watched on as Miss Posen tried to get us into formation.

“Emily, where is your scarf?”

I glanced down at my wrist and felt cold.

I’d left it on my bed.

“You have time” Miss Posen said. “Go and get it. We can wait.”

I ran back to the room.

I ran back and I searched my bed for my scarf.

I found it.

I found it on Beca’s bed, tied in a knot around a scroll of paper.

I think I knew, then.

I think I knew.

I pulled the scarf away and unfurled the torn half of her letter. I flipped it over to see her scribbled, messy scrawl on the other side, the ink smudged by obvious tear stains.

I took a shuddering breath, desperately willing my eyes to work, and I tried my best to read through the tears I could already feel burning at the back of my eyes.

I stopped. I stopped reading and I ran, as fast as I could, back outside. I stopped and I ran and I stopped and I looked up.

“I’m only human” the melody pierced me like a knife, her voice carrying on the wind “and I bleed when I fall down”.

I watched her standing up there, up there with the birds, and her words entered my head. Words that had been meant for her, not me.

_I wish I was bulletproof._

_I wish I was titanium._

_But you shot me down. You shot me down and I fell._

_I fell before I even knew I was falling._

_Ironic, isn’t it? Because you always told me I could fly._

_You told me a lot of things, but they were all just words._

_Words like forever. And ever. And never._

_And goodbye._

///

I never said goodbye, not really.

I didn’t want to forget her.

I didn’t want her to be forgotten.

I didn’t want her to be reduced to something she wasn’t; didn’t want her complicated, interweaving melodies simplified to a scale. She wasn’t linear. She didn’t deserve to be remember that way.

So, I wrote. For her.

I finished my song.

I stood on stage, lights on my face, and I sang it.

_When tomorrow comes, I’ll be on my own.Feeling frightened of the things that I don’t know._

I thought of her face. I thought of her eyes, wild and free. I thought of nothing but ‘rage more’ and, suddenly, the future didn’t seem so scary. I wasn’t a Mouse. I wasn’t afraid.

_And though the road is long, I look up to the sky. And in the dark I found I lost hope that I won’t fly._

I had never wanted to fly, not really. I looked up to the skies and thought of her.

I thought of her and I put pen to paper and I wrote from my soul. I wrote it down because life is short and love is the destination and if we don’t stop at the top, we fall.

I wrote because music was in our souls. Our twin souls.

Music could live on.

Music could make her fly the way she had always wanted to.

I looked up, a light illuminating only my face on an otherwise dark stage, and I smiled.

Flashlight.

That would be her legacy.


End file.
